Notions Of Equity Research Articles

Increasing Diversity of Yakan Teijisei Koukou (Part-Time Evening High Schools): Changes in the Notion of Equity Concerning Students with Foreign Backgrounds

Increasing Diversity of <i>Yakan Teijisei Koukou</i> (Part-Time Evening High Schools): Changes in the Notion of Equity Concerning Students with Foreign Backgrounds

GENDER CONTEXT OF PERSONALISM IN BIOETHICS

Personalism is one of the philosophical perspectives which hold that the reality in person and the human person has the highest intrinsic value. This paper makes reference to Louis Janssens' eight criteria in adequate consideration of the human person but further argues that there is need to consider people as situated agents especially within gender relational perspectives. The paper identifies gender as an important social construction that shapes the consideration of the human persons within socio-spatial spheres. The main crux of the paper is that there is a gender context of personalism and this has profound implications for bioethical agendas. Gender is part of the human condition, especially when we philosophically or sociologically engage the notion of equity and equality within the social system, because social realities in the relational perspective are not impartial, impersonal and equal. Gender does not determine morality but it plays a role in morality and expectations from moral agents. Women have been categorised as a sociological group because their integrity, freedom/autonomy and dignity (which are basic concerns of bioethics) are capable of being threatened. A gender perspective provides important incentives for moral theory which searches for possible conceptual imbalances or blind spots in ethical reflections. The paper refers to Sen's faces of gender inequality and expands on the notion that natality inequality is one of the fundamental levels of gender inequality, which in turn is the primary starting agenda in bioethics. The paper avers that the recognition of the fundamental importance of gender to the organization of social reality and the development of personal identities have important practical implications for bioethics.

Reestablishing Balance: Twombly-Iqbal and Affirmative Defenses

The majority of United States district courts considering the question of whether Bell Atlantic v. Twombly applies to affirmative defenses have applied the standard. However, a minority of United States district courts have declined to apply the Twombly-Iqbal standard to affirmative defenses. The courts’ divergent opinions reflect differing interpretations of the Federal Rules and of the scope of the Twombly decision, as well as differing notions of equity and fairness. This paper argues that the courts should apply the Twombly standard to affirmative defenses. Through consideration of the Federal Rules, as well as the holding and public policy considerations of Twombly itself, this paper shows why this conclusion is consistent with the text and intention of the Federal Rules. Furthermore, it emphasizes that applying the Twombly standard to affirmative defenses will result in the federal courts reestablishing a balanced pleading regime that adopts a notion of fairness that considers both plaintiffs and defendants.

A scoping review on the experiences and preferences in accessing diabetes-related healthcare information and services by British Bangladeshis

Diabetes is a chronic condition requiring lifelong self-management. Patients are encouraged to access appropriate services to facilitate optimum management of diabetes. Although equitable access to healthcare in the United Kingdom is a legal right, not all groups and individuals in the community experience equity. Despite various equality laws and numerous efforts to minimise health inequalities related to access, particular community groups are more likely to experience inequitable access than others. The Bangladeshi community are one such community who experience some of the worst diabetes-related health outcomes in the United Kingdom. Little is known about their experiences and preferences in accessing diabetes healthcare information and services. Consequently, we undertook a scoping review of the literature by following the York Scoping Reviews Framework to identify the experiences and preferences of Bangladeshi patients and carers when gaining access to diabetes-related healthcare information and services. We identified eight articles and reported our results in relation to four domains of access: health service availability, health service utilisation, health service outcomes and the notion of equity. The review identified that language and literacy issues were the most common barriers hindering access to information and services. Patient knowledge regarding diabetes and its management was generally low, and friends and family were frequently being used as information sources and as informal interpreters. Additionally, there were feelings of isolation from mainstream information and services possibly resulting in the high prevalence of depression in the Bangladeshi community with women more affected than men. Social networks combined with religious and cultural beliefs as well as wider societal duties played a crucial role in accessing information and services for this population, and the identification of these issues merit further research and are possible avenues towards improved access to healthcare information and services for the Bangladeshi population.

Ubuntu: An African Equity

In this paper the uses of ubuntu in constitutional law, criminal law, administrative law, the law of property, family law, delict and contract are investigated. Furthermore the theoretical objections to the use of ubuntu are stated and responded to. It is found that ubuntu provides the South African courts with a metanorm similar to the English notion of equity and that it is being deployed to give voice to something distinctively African. It promises to lay the foundations for a cohesive, plural, South African legal culture, characterized by notions such as reconciliation, sharing, compassion, civility, responsibility, trust and harmony.

Análisis del concepto de equidad educativa a la luz del enfoque de las capacidades de Amartya Sen

The purpose of this research is to analyze the concept of educational equity from the capabilities standpoint proposed by Amartya Sen. To do this, first the literature on the notion of equity is reviewed and a philosophical discussion about it is presented. Second, it is applied to the educational field. Third, according to the Sen approach, educational equity is defined as equality in outcomes in abilities that individuals aquire in the educational system (secondary level). Finally, it is concluded that under this conception it is possible recommend policies to compensate original differences.

Changing governance, changing needs interpretations: implications for universalism

PurposeThe paper seeks to explore how universal welfare arrangements based on needs testing may change and assume different institutional forms. Drawing attention to Norwegian home care, the paper explores how established interpretations of needs and associated notions of equity among needs have been challenged by shifting modes of governance.Design/methodology/approachThe study draws on policy documents, interviews and observation from three different case studies undertaken at different points in time representing different eras of governance. From this perspective, the study examines the role of professionals taking part in needs assessment.FindingsThe studies indicate that routines for needs assessment in home care are contingent on shifting logics of governance. A shift in policy of needs testing may be described as a shift from a personal situated approach encouraging “creative justice” towards a detached and impartial approach better equipped to ensure “proportional justice”. The latter approach has become more dominant as heightened attention has been paid to citizens' rights. It is, however, questionable to what extent it will improve the preconditions for treating citizens with equal concern and respect.Research limitations/implicationsThe case study approach underlying the study is incapable of providing generalised conclusions about the development in all Norwegian municipalities.Originality/valueUniversalism is often talked about as a stable feature of the Nordic welfare system. Drawing attention to the underlying and elusive notions of needs, the study makes explicit some unstable aspects of universalism.

Planning Sustainability: Intergenerational and Intragenerational Justice in Spatial Planning Strategies

Abstract: Subsequent to the Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, Our Common Future), sustainability has been set up in many countries as a mission statement of cross‐sectoral policies. Sustainable development carries the normative notions of equity, empowerment and environmentally sensitive economic development. Thus, it seems to suggest a fundamentally different vision to neoliberal dogma, which is at the same time described as dominating all socio‐political processes. This paper intends to explore the relation between these two discursive framings of contemporary policies through the example of German spatial planning guidelines. More precisely, it addresses social justice as one pillar of sustainability and how it is operationalised in spatial planning policies in Germany. This may exemplify how the seemingly opposing discourses interact in policy practices. The empirical analysis suggests that the ways in which the German spatial planning report focused on social space in territorial terms promotes an economistic and truncated view of social justice, one which fosters the neoliberal idea of regional competition for global capital and reduces socio‐spatial justice to territorially equally distributed economic inclusion.

Higher Education Sector in India: Issues and Imperatives

Higher education in India is undergoing rapid changes. The challenges ahead are multifaceted and multidimensional. Though the data show a massive growth in the number of students' enrollment in colleges/universities, holistic view reveals that still only a meager of the total population has access to higher education. Globalization and privatization are imposing new challenges but the nations are still entangled in solving the basic problems of accessibility to higher education for all. In the wake of the transition from elitist to mass education, universities worldwide are under pressure to enhance access and equity, on the one hand, and to maintain high standards of quality and excellence, on the other. Today the notion of equity not only implies greater access to higher education, but also opportunities for progress. In recent debates on higher education, the notions of equity and access go beyond minority to diversity. Affirmative action, too, has become race-exclusive and gender-neutral.

Children's participation in health research: from objects to agents?

In the UK, there is a growing recognition of the need to include children's accounts in research on paediatric health care. This paper seeks to examine ways in which children have been included in health-related studies to identify strengths and weaknesses. Key empirical based studies were identified via comprehensive searches of academic literature databases to exemplify research practices related to three ways of engaging with children in health-related research. These three approaches are summarized as research on children, with children and by children. Research on children engages with adult 'authorities', such as parents and medical professionals. This approach allows some access to children including those understood as hard-to-reach: for example, pre-speech infants, or children with complex developmental disabilities. Research with children includes children as respondents to engage directly with their own understandings. This may be achieved alongside adult representatives, or by focusing only on the children themselves. Research by children encourages children to participate in the research process itself. This may occur across any, or indeed, every stage from design to dissemination to enable children to set the agenda themselves. Each of the three approaches has strengths and weaknesses, and involves some form of adult-mediation. Inclusion of children's perspectives can be achieved, at varying levels, in each approach (on, with and by) examined here. Although claims to authority around including children's perspectives may appear to hold more credence when children have directly participated in the research, there may be times when this is neither possible nor appropriate. Researchers are challenged to be open and reflexive about ways in which children are engaged with, incorporated in and represented across the many stages of research. Whichever approach is taken, ethical issues and notions of equity remain problematic. This point holds particular resonance for ways in which ethics around children may be considered in National Health Service ethics governance processes.

Defining Equity: Multiple Perspectives to Analyzing the Performance of Diverse Learners

Defining equity within the context of a diverse, multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, and multicultural society, and one where social class strongly influences one's life chances is problematic. This chapter reexamines equity in an attempt to advance the discourse beyond the debate about strategies to close the achievement gap between White students and students of color. I situated the issue of equity within an analysis of broader social forces that cultivate inequality throughout society in employment, housing, criminal justice, and so forth so that educational inequality is part and parcel of overarching social ills. The notion of equity will be unpacked by asking a more basic and fundamental question about the ultimate purpose of education. If we assume the end game of education is producing student learning, then we should ask whether learning outcomes are distributed randomly across race, ethnicity, and social class. Moreover, I will explore whether No Child Left Behind (NCLB)-like assessments or high-stakes tests measure real learning necessary for social and economic success, or do they measure something else. The role of increased accountability via state-based systems as an approach to obtaining equity is hotly debated. Although advocates are many, several studies have found the consequences of high-stakes testing, which are nonobvious and perhaps unintended, have not helped advance the nation toward equitable schooling. The pursuit of educational equity has long been a goal of reform efforts in the United States. Yet creating a system of education where all children have equal access to quality instruction and widely available opportunities to learn to their fullest human potential has been elusive. More than half a century ago, the Brown v. Board of Education decision settled persistent concerns about the degree to which access to quality schooling was based on race (Ball, 2006; Ball & Samy, 2006; Gutierrez

Principles of justice in proposals and policy approaches to avoided deforestation: Towards a post-Kyoto climate agreement

This paper offers a normative analysis of the current negotiations on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Drawing on existing theories of distributive justice, we seek to determine which interpretations of equity are embodied in the key proposals and policy approaches to REDD in the run up to a post-Kyoto climate agreement. Our analysis indicates that whilst the various proposals are characterised by different and sometimes contradictory notions of equity, it is the ideas that are more consistent with neoliberal concepts of justice that tend to prevail. The result is that despite abiding contestations and controversies, emerging REDD policy solutions for the post-2012 climate regime looks very likely to reflect a commitment to market-based approaches to forest governance. However, whilst such market-based approaches might serve the preferences of powerful players, their effectiveness in terms of forest preservation, the protection of indigenous peoples and sustainable community development remains extremely dubious. On a broader note, our analysis reinforces the growing realization that the international arena is not beyond the pale of moral arguments but rather that the governance of global environmental change implicates elemental ethical questions regarding which ways of life human beings ought to pursue.

Mesures de l'équité en santé

Résumé Alors que de nombreuses recherches récentes ont apporté des éléments de mesure, voire d’explication des inégalités sociales de santé et de recours aux soins en France, leurs aspects relevant de l’équité n’ont pas été systématiquement mis en avant. Cet article pose la question du statut de l’équité dans le contexte actuel de travaux empiriques et propose une lecture éthique des recherches récentes dans le domaine des inégalités en santé, tant économiques qu’épidémiologiques, particulièrement celles qui relèvent de la demande de soins de santé. Nous considérons les aspects de l’équité sous-jacents à la mesure de la santé, la mesure des inégalités et l’interprétation des résultats. Il apparaît alors que le concept d’équité ne saurait être écarté de l’analyse économique dans ce domaine d’application que constitue la santé et qu’un effort plus systématique d’explicitation des fondements éthiques des mesures empiriques permettrait de mieux articuler mesure et décision. En outre, l’accent est mis sur l’apport majeur que constitue le passage de l’analyse des inégalités de santé à celle d’inégalités des chances en santé, qui offre une transcription directe de la notion d’équité en santé.

Responsibility as a meta-virtue: truth-telling, deliberation and wisdom in medical professionalism

The article examines the new discourse on medical professionalism and responsibility through the prism of conflicts among moral values, especially with regard to truth-telling.The discussion is anchored in the renaissance...

The trade-off between efficiency and equity in road safety policy

This paper discusses the relationship between efficiency and equity as objectives of road safety policy. The term efficiency refers to the efficient use of all road safety measures. Road safety measures are used efficiently if the priority given to them is based on the criterion that marginal social benefits should be at least equal to marginal social costs. To use road safety measures efficiently therefore means that the priority given to each measure is set strictly according to cost–benefit analyses. Thus, the main question discussed in this paper is whether setting priorities for safety measures strictly according to cost–benefit analyses will produce results that are regarded as equitable and fair. The notions of equity and fairness do not have any universally accepted definitions. In the paper, an attempt is made to apply John Rawls’ difference principle as a criterion of fairness with respect to the distribution of risk. The distribution of risk is examined along several dimensions: between groups of road users, between regions, between social groups, and with respect to the relationship between who pays for a road safety measure and who benefits from it. It is concluded that there is a conflict between efficiency and equity as far as the provision of road safety is concerned. Promoting greater equity requires a departure from efficiency, as defined in economic welfare theory, as the only criterion for setting policy priorities.

A paradox of the public good: how far should we democratize? From principles to policy to practice

In the complex real world of the higher education policy-maker, he/she often has to weave a tortuous route between universally held principles governing higher education in general and the actual formulation of operating policies that embody these principles. In addition he/she must monitor the implementation of these policies to see that their implementation actually achieves their intended purposes. Unfortunately, in practice, the desired effect is not always realized. This paper looks at one such universal principle, that of democratization of higher education, which conveys the twofold notion of equity of access, and providing as many places in higher education as society demands. It then looks at a few instances where this principle is translated into a variety of policies, with different results.

Evolution and implications of a paradigm shift in the marketing of leisure services in the USA

The evolution of leisure services marketing in the USA has passed through five stages in the past half‐century: pre‐marketing (activity/custodial focus), selling, user benefits orientation, community‐wide benefits orientation and repositioning. The first two stages were supplanted by the user benefits orientation in the late 1970s. The user benefits focus transitioned into the leisure field from the business literature and remained pre‐eminent until the mid‐1990s. It was superseded because it had two conceptual flaws. First, it failed to address the notion of equity. Second, its focus on being responsive to individual users was inconsistent with the broader mandate of public leisure agencies to provide community‐wide services. The emergence of credible scientific research in the past decade to support advocates’ claims of community‐wide benefits has facilitated emergence of the most recent evolutionary stage of leisure services marketing which is repositioning. Repositioning seeks to connect community‐wide benefits the agency has the potential to deliver with an issue that is important to taxpayers and elected officials. It is argued that repositioning is the key to the future viability of public leisure agencies.

Inequity in Hindu–Muslim Riots: A Test of Two Biases1

During the past 50 years, substantially more Muslims than Hindus have died in riots in India. This study examined and found support for 2 possible individual‐level reasons that are consistent with this disproportionate number of deaths. First, Hindus, compared to Muslims, considered historical incidents to be more important for contemporary Hindu–Muslim relations. Second, Hindus showed an ultimate group bias in that they generally valued Hindu lives more than Muslim lives, whereas Muslims showed no difference in the valuation of Hindu and Muslim lives. Together, these results are consistent with an equity notion that Hindus consider as relevant input factors both historical incidents and perceptions that in‐group members’ lives are more valuable than are out‐group members’ lives.

Ranking profiles of capability sets

In this paper, we present an innovative approach for ranking profiles of capability sets on the basis of equity. An interesting way of capturing the notion of equity is to take into account the extent to which each of the different functioning vectors is shared by the population under consideration (of size n). This is done by defining the ‘common capability sets’ enjoyed by k individuals as the set of functioning vectors simultaneously available to at least k individuals (1 ≤ k ≤ n). These sets are closely related to the original capability sets and have some interesting properties that are examined throughout the paper. We define and axiomatically characterize a capability profile ranking that lexicographically compares the different common capability sets.

Carmelita's In-Possible Dance: Another style of Christianity in the Capitalist Ridden Caribbean

Two characteristics mark the Caribbean: capitalism and the hegemony of North Atlantic versions of Christianity. The colonization and exploitation of the Caribbean was justified in the name of profit and the dominant North Atlantic renderings of Christ's message. Having been conceived by the joint forces of these worldly and otherworldly regimes of subjugation, both equally brutal, both making unreasonable demands, both contested yet internalized, the Caribbean gave rise to a schizophrenic culture that played the two forces up against each other. By focusing on a Dominican newcomer on the bi-national island Saint Martin & Sint Maarten (SXM), a devout Pentecostal who works as a prostitute, called Carmelita, this paper demonstrates how working class West Indian2 women and men on this island adapt their Christian performance to the realities of everyday life in a capitalist economy. Vice versa, by appealing to the notions of equity and justice inherent in the Christian tradition which are put forth in popular Caribbean songs, West Indians demand not to be reduced to mere human commodities put to work in the capitalist machinery. Nevertheless, adaptation is not the same as transcending the dichotomy between capitalism and North Atlantic Christianity, for though in a continuous process of change and interaction, both remain separate hegemonic forces in the Caribbean. Journal for the Study of Religion Vol. 19 (1) 2006: pp. 5-22